heathcote elementary

Written by Cristina Calabrese, Director of Operations & Founding member of The Digital Arts Experience

When The Digital Arts Experience (The DAE) of White Plains opened its doors in July 2012, our main purpose was to provide After School & Summer Tech Camps to kids and teens throughout Westchester County.

As The DAE began to expand upon the courses taught inside our facility, so did the demand for us to bring our programs offsite as well. With this came the idea for our Mobile Classroom, The DAExpress (The Digital Arts Express).

The DAExpress was created to provide the most cutting edge technology in a state of the art learning environment available to the Westchester community.

Inside The Digital Arts Express, or The DAExpress.

Able to accommodate up to 10 students at once, The DAExpress is designed to act as one of our classrooms on wheels. With this mobile computer lab, we can offer nearly every single class that we teach in our White Plains facility, anywhere in Westchester, Southern Connecticut and Rockland.

The DAExpress is equipped with 10 brand new Mac Book Pros, a Makerbot Replicator 2 3D printer, and the best digital teaching tools. We bring The DAE to you!

Since its inception in September, we’ve run classes and programs with nearly 15+ unique local schools and organizations, including:

Children’s Village of Dobbs Ferry

Don Bosco Community Center

Greenville School

Greenwich Academy

Greenwich Country Day School

Heathcote Elementary

JCC on the Hudson

Rye Arts Center

SAR Academy

Seeley Place

Solomon Schechter School of Westchester: Upper & Lower School

Westchester Hebrew High School

Westchester Library System

Westfield Day School

White Plains YMCA

White Plains Youth Bureau

…and more! We also run private, custom classes that we bring right to your door.

Students at Solomon Schechter show off their final projects in Scratch coding!

In addition to that, we don’t always use our Mobile Classroom when we travel to schools. Often times we will drive over and use the school’s computer room or media lab and provide classes out of there. In many cases, schools and organizations do not have the necessary equipment to provide such classes on their own. That is one of the reasons that The DAExpress came about.

The DAExpress allows us to bring everything: instructor, class content, and equipment. And the best part is – we come to you! Topics that we teach include:

We can also provide Professional Development to school staff. In short, there is a lot we could do with our Mobile Classroom. As time goes by, we discover new and unique uses for it. We are excited to keep it “rolling” and see where the future takes us!

Do you know of a school or local organization in need of After School STEM related programming? Contact us at info@TheDAE.com or feel free to visit our website www.TheDAE.com to learn more.

Stop Motion Animation using LEGO at Heathcote Elementary School.

The DAExpress Mobile STEM Lab: Rob & Emily get ready to depart for a class!

The Mobile Classroom accommodates up to 10 students plus an instructor. It’s BlueTEC emission system system will produce zero odor.